Women's Fashions of the 17th Century

More of this Feature • Part 1 - 16 pictures of 17th century women's clothing • Part 2 - 16 more images of 17th century women's clothing

Related Resources • Women's Fashions in History • Index to Etexts on Women's History

From Other Guides • Fashion - History

Images collected by Jone Johnson Lewis
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In the mid-17th century, Wenceslaus Holler published this series of engravings depicting the costume of women in England. These images record a contemporary view of the costume of women, a subject which fascinated the artist. Wenceslaus Hollar was a 17th century engraver who published over two thousand of his drawings. He was born in Prague, Bohemia, and spent most of his career in England.

Because these drawings were done from life subjects, they are quite valuable as resources for researching the clothing that women wore in the 17th century. There are few such resources available for any other time before the 19th century, when women's magazines began to feature drawings of fashions and when pattern books were published with many illustrations of contemporary costume.

These illustrations were adapted from copies reprinted in English Costume: Tudor and Stuart by Dion Clayton Calthrop, London, 1906. Calthrop's only comment on these illustrations was this:

"These excellent drawings by Hollar need no explanation. They are included in this book because of their great value as accurate contemporary drawings of costume."

Apparently, Calthrop thought that all readers would be familiar with Hollar's work!

Images

I've allowed the pictures to be fairly large in size in order to show as much details as possible, so they may be slow-loading on slower connections or slower computers.

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